Google announce on it’s blog today that it will be switching Google Product Search (Google Base, Google Merchant or Froogle) to a cost-per-click business model and will be officially called Google Shopping. Whether you call it pay-per-click(PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC), this game changing transition will happen over the next few months. Google has stated that they are “starting to transition Google Product Search in the U.S. to a purely commercial model built on Product Listing Ads.”

Google is saying the ranking within the new Google Shopping will be based on a combination of relevance and bid price–just like Product Listing Ads today. The new Google Shopping Program can be found at Google Shopping.

Google also mentions standing out from the crowd by being a Google Trusted Store. Since Google stands behind merchants that have earned the Google Trusted Stores, one can only assume that Google will give these store additional weighting in their algorithms.

As this is a significant change for e-commerce industry that has thrived on Google’s free platform, we at OperationROI are working hard to ensure that we are fully up to speed on the best way to handle this transition for our clients. We want our clients to fully understand the impact of this change as well as the implications for their business.